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Caution: slow-moving pitcher: conditions usually are hazardous with a dawdler on the mound; a grip-it-and-rip-it tempo keeps hitters off-balance, fielders alert—and pitchers in a groove

Sporting News, The, August 30, 2004 by Stan McNeal

Mark Buehrle works fast. Toe the rubber. Look in. Throw. Repeat. As the ace of the White Sox's staff, his job is to pitch, and so he does. Expediently, economically and expeditiously. He says there are times when he already has started his delivery before his catcher has put down the sign.

Then there are the guys who must believe that time stops when they take the mound, and it can seem that way to those watching. Take Reds righthander lose Acevedo. Waiting for him to pitch is like sitting at the traffic light that takes forever to change from red to green. He wanders around the mound. He ponders the catcher's sign. He holds onto the baseball like it's his last dollar. You'd think he doesn't want to pitch for fear of what might happen.

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Care to guess which pitcher is more successful?

One has a 5-10 record and a 6.26 ERA in 26 games (23 starts), the other is 11-7 with a 4.00 ERA in 27 starts. If you picked Buehrle, give yourself a pat on the back. A quick one, that is.

Certainly, there's more to Buehrle's superiority than an accelerated approach. He has four good pitches--fastball, changeup, curve and slider--changes speeds and locates. He also is one of the game's most durable starters. Going into his third week as part of a four-man rotation, he is on pace to top 220 innings for the fourth consecutive season.

Buehrle, though, is quick to acknowledge that a pitcher's tempo is telling. Working quickly exudes confidence and doesn't allow him time to dwell on the previous pitch. Just as important, it doesn't give the fielders behind him an excuse to lose their concentration. While Buehrle is gaining a reputation as the quickest of the quick workers, the majority of the game's top starters approach their jobs with a similar grip-it-and-rip-it attitude.

Cubs righthander and 300-game winner Greg Maddux has been known to holler at his catcher for holding him up. Boston's Curt Schilling usually finds himself standing on the rubber waiting for the hitter to finish his between-pitches ritual. After striking out a hitter, the Red Sox's Pedro Martinez holds up his glove, waiting for the ball, way before his teammates have finished throwing it around the horn. A's lefthander Mark Mulder and Buehrle faced off twice last season, and both games had the feel of a Jim Kaat-Tommy John matchup of yesteryear. They lasted 1 hour, 54 minutes and 1 hour, 53 minutes--more than 50 minutes quicker than the average length of a game. Ben Sheets (Brewers), Roy Oswalt (Astros), Kerry Wood (Cubs) and Roy Halladay (Blue Jays) all rank among STATS Inc.'s leaders in working quick games, in no small part because of their disdain for piddling around on the mound.

"Most guys who work slow are out there walking around, thinking about a bad pitch they just made, or a bad play behind them," says Tigers pitching coach Bob Cluck. "They tend to dwell on the negative, and that's not how you want to pitch."

A slow approach can take away a pitcher's advantage of setting up a hitter. Pitchers aim to keep hitters off-balance by mixing their pitches, such as following a fastball with a changeup. But when the White Sox's Jose Contreras dawdles between deliveries, the effect his 95-mph fastball can have on his split-finger fastball is lost. Cluck puts the cutoff at 13 seconds for one pitch being able to affect the next one. "It would seem to be an individual thing depending on the hitter," Cluck says of the 13-second figure, "but I do a lot of reading and have seen scientific evidence that if you throw a fastball and follow with a changeup, the faster you can get the pitch up there, the bigger the difference will seem."

Despite the advantages of a quick pace, the game still has its deliberators. They're in the minority among starting pitchers, but they're out there. Some lack confidence in their ability and, as a result, attempt to make the perfect pitch every time. Perfection takes time. Others are thinkers who want to be absolutely certain that, say, throwing a curveball on a 1-2 count is a better pitch than a changeup. They're probably just wasting their time. As Reds pitching coach Don Gullett says, "Think long, usually wrong."

There are even a handful of successful slowpokes. Games worked by deepthinking A's lefthander Barry Zito regularly take upward of 3 hours, and he has won a Cy Young Award. Cubs righthander Matt Clement often resorts to a routine that includes licking his fingers, rubbing his legs and shrugging his shoulders, but he has been one of the N.L's best pitchers--though this season he has only an 8-11 record to show for his 3.21 ERA.

Mets lefthander Al Leiter ranks second in the N.L. in ERA even though his games usually last kruger than a Lord of the Rings epic. With Leiter, however, it's not the time between deliveries that drags down his starts. His games last a long time because he throws a lot of pitches--his pitches-per-batter average is the highest in the majors. The statistics suggest the defense behind him hasn't been affected; the often-porous Mets have not allowed an unearned run with him on the mound.

Caution: slow-moving pitcher: conditions usually are hazardous with a dawdler on the mound; a grip-it-and-rip-it tempo keeps hitters off-balance, fielders alert—and pitchers in a groove

Sporting News, The, August 30, 2004 by Stan McNeal

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